Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning shuts down
"I don't want to gloss over the real human cost of the project's failure"
EA Mythic MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was taken offline last night, after the license agreement between Mythic and IP holder Games Workshop came to an end.
"I'm not going to waste time picking at old wounds or attempting to offer a post-mortem commentary on 'what happened,'" said former producer on the game Josh Drescher in a personal blog.
"There's been tons of gossip and speculation and smug armchair game design (and project management) in the years since it launched. Some small bits of it have been on-target. Most of it is uninformed BS. It will be up to people well above my pay grade to decide if the 'real story' ever gets told."
"It will be up to people well above my pay grade to decide if the 'real story' ever gets told"
Users were notified of the planned shutdown in September, when EA Mythic also suspended account creation and removed subscription fees. The game first launched in September 2008 after the Warhammer license was acquired by Mythic in May 2005.
In 2009 EA reported subscriber numbers of 300,000, and that year began closing servers down.
"I don't want to gloss over the real human cost of the project's failure to become a blockbuster, because that's a very real part of the story as well," continued Drescher.
"I realise that not everyone was able to transition to new and better things, at least not within our industry. There were a large number of people who simply decided they couldn't put their families through the stress of the game development 'lifestyle' anymore."